The Garbage Patch Bird

The remains of an albatross chick lie on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand that is one of the world's most remote marine sanctuaries. Midway is more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent—but it's also in the middle of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vast oceanic swirl of plastic debris. Nesting chicks fill their bellies with plastic as their parents collect and feed them bits that look to them like food. As a result, tens of thousands of albatross chicks die from starvation, choking, internal bleeding, and poisoning each year. See more of Chris Jordan's Midway devastating photos here.